February 24, 2011

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Another bombshell by Rolling Stone's Michael Hastings, who reports Thursday that a U.S. general ordered psychological operations techniques used to persuade U.S. lawmakers to provide more funding and troops for Afghanistan:

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as "information operations" at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation. [...]

The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members of the IO team and internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts. [...]

When Holmes and his four-man team arrived in Afghanistan in November 2009, their mission was to assess the effects of U.S. propaganda on the Taliban and the local Afghan population. But the following month, Holmes began receiving orders from Caldwell’s staff to direct his expertise on a new target: visiting Americans. [...]

Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin ( D-Mich.) issued this statement in reaction to the piece, rejecting the piece's implication at the end that Levin's long-time support for more Afghan troop training as a way to get out of Afghanistan was a result of such info-ops:

“For years, I have strongly and repeatedly advocated for building up Afghan military capability because I believe only the Afghans can truly secure their nation’s future. I have never needed any convincing on this point. Quite the opposite, my efforts have been aimed at convincing others of the need for larger, more capable Afghan security forces, and that we and NATO should send more trainers to Afghanistan, rather than more combat troops. I am confident that the chain of command will review any allegation that information operations have been improperly used in Afghanistan.”

The U.S. military will investigate the allegations raised in the Rolling Stone piece that "military personnel were instructed to engage in 'information operations' to convince members of Congress to support the mission," the New York Times reported Thursday:

A brief statement issued by the American headquarters in Kabul said that Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander in Afghanistan, “is preparing to order an investigation to determine the facts and circumstances surrounding the issue.” [...]

The allegations again underscore a debate that has been raging across the military about how to manage information during wartime.

The so-called “battle space of ideas” is an important front in a counter-insurgency campaign that requires the support of the local population — and is waged against militants who are expert at rapidly disseminating their point of view.

There have been a number of instances in Iraq and Afghanistan in which the military’s traditional lines between public information strategies and pyschological operations have blurred. By regulation, the targets of psychological operations can only be enemy or neutral populations — not Americans.

Any official military order to mount such a campaign with American lawmakers as targets could be deemed a serious violation, according to Pentagon officials.

The big source of the story is identified as an IO Officer, Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes. IO is Information Operations and the MOS is 30A. As you can imagine, they are tasked with providing information to whomever is designated, mostly our troops but DV's as well.
Psy-Ops MOS is 37A, a totally different specialty and they are tasked with conducting psychological operations against the enemy.
The premise of the story is that a Psy-Ops Officer was ordered to illegally conduct operations against DV's instead of waging psychological warfare against the enemy. This premise is incorrect. An Information Officer was ordered to provide information on Distinguished Visitors, and is well within his job description and the law.
If the hippies at Rolling Stone would ever have served anyone but themselves they would have easily known the difference and this wouldn't even be a story.

THE REAL PSY OPS SCANDAL IS DOMESTIC ABUSE OF U.S. CITIZENS BY A FUSION CENTER MULTI-AGENCY/COMMAND GESTAPO

This is NOTHING compared to the malicious and harmful psy ops being directed at American citizens deemed to be "dissidents" or undesirables by ideologues and hate-mongers in various agencies and commands. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are being silently tortured, impaired, subjugated and harmed in the name of electromagnetic psy ops -- just another name for the torture matrix. A veteran journalist (and victim) reports: